


The TAPS Out Job

by tattooeddevil



Category: Ghost Hunters RPF, Leverage
Genre: Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-04
Updated: 2013-06-04
Packaged: 2017-12-13 23:00:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/829842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tattooeddevil/pseuds/tattooeddevil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eliot Spencer walks into a bar and meets... Britt Griffith!</p>
            </blockquote>





	The TAPS Out Job

The brewery is quiet when he walks in, just a few tables occupied. Chris, the sous chef, catches his eye and waves him over immediately, leaning over the counter to whisper conspiratorially to Eliot. “They’re at table six.”

Eliot slowly turns to glance at what is table six, to find two guys sitting at it. They don’t look like anything that would warrant Chris’ strange phone call and request that Eliot come over and check them out. One tall guy, the other shorter and stockier, but relatively normal looking. Especially for Portland.

“They sat at table eleven first, then moved to eight, then two and now six. They keep waving these--devices around too.”

The table the two guys are sitting at is littered with grey and black boxes that Eliot can’t quite make out. They look like transmitters, something electrical anyway. “Waving them around how?”

Chris shrugs and jerks an arm around himself, probably imitating what the guys had done, but to Eliot it looks like very bad, elaborate charades. They way Parker does it. “Like, waving them across the window and the bathroom door and even around the back entrance.”

That gets Eliot’s attention. “The back entrance?” No one is allowed to be at the back entrance except delivery and the Leverage team. “What were they doing there?”

Chris shrugs again. “No idea. I shooed them out, and I called you. They’ve been sitting there ever since, hunched over their gadgets, talking.”

Eliot nods distractedly, mind already racing with possible reasons why the guys are here and what they want. Who they could be working for. He absentmindedly thanks Chris for calling him, before making his way over to the table with the two men. He has no idea how to approach the situation yet, but it can’t hurt to at least talk to them.

Just as he gets to the table, the tall guy stands up with the announcement he needs to take a piss. The shorter guy nods, then sees Eliot. “Hey KJ, you want more coffee?”

The tall guy, KJ, nods and disappears to the toilets. Eliot smiles at the shorter guy. “More coffee?”

The guy smiles, slides their empty cups over to Eliot. “Please. So, uhm, do you know who owns this place?”

Eliot raises a surprised eyebrow at the question. He wasn’t expecting them to just come out and ask for it like that. He is caught off guard, and he goes with the first thought in his mind. “That would be me. I’m Eliot.”

The guy nods, puts a hand on his chest. “Britt Griffith.”

Britt is wearing a dark t-shirt with a print that triggers something in Eliot. The robot looks like something he’s seen before--maybe on TV?--and the words--Soft Dalek, warm Dalek--ring a bell in the back of his head too. Britt must see him frown, because he glances down at his shirt with a smirk.

“My friend Paul made it. He’s a bit of a Doctor Who and Big Bang Theory fan.”

At least that makes it click with Eliot. He still doesn’t have a television set, no matter how many times Hardison keeps insisting it is unnatural for a human not to have a TV, but Parker and Hardison watch both shows on the big screens every now and then. Parker mostly watches because she likes the bowties and Penny’s shiny hair. Her words, not Eliot’s.

“I like Doctor Who too, I mean, who doesn’t? But I’m not much of a Big Bang Theory fan, it’s just all too many easy jokes and stereotypes, you know? I mean, I’m a geek, sure, but the way they portray geeks in general is so typical it is almost insulting. And then they give the uber-geek an equally geeky girlfriend who is even more of a stereotype than she is. Just no.”

Eliot has no idea what Britt is talking about, beyond knowing the titles of the series, and when he gets a break in Britt’s ramble, he holds up a hand with a stern look. “Woah, hang on. I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t own a TV.”

Britt gets the same shocked, almost insulted, look on his face when Eliot says that. “Wow. I didn’t think that was possible.”

Eliot rolls his eyes. He doesn’t need this from two people. “Well, it is. So what’s all of this?” He gestures at the devices on the table. Up close, he can see that they’re not transmitters. There is at least one iPad, but he spots a geiger counter too, and a few flashlights. There’s a black box with rainbow colored lights on it, a small camera with an infrared light next to it, another camera, something that looks like a normal MP3 player, and a round little cylinder with an antenna that actually does look like a transmitter.

Britt casts a glance at his devices before looking back up at Eliot with an obviously excited glint in his eyes. Eliot has a split second to regret asking it in the first place, but then Britt is off, rambling again.

“Well, this is an EMF meter, we use it to detect EMF fluctuations in a room. It stands for electromagnetic fields. Fluctuations mean there might be a ghost around. And this black one with the colored lights is a K2 meter, we use it to communicate with the spirits. They can turn the lights on and off. The camera is a full spectrum camera, so we can see all colors in the spectrum, even the ones we can’t see with the naked eye. The recorders catch whatever they say to us. The other camera has an infrared light so we can see better in the dark and scan for non-human masses, and this is an em-pod. We set it up with a receiver at the other end of a room and when the beam between them is broken, the em-pod gives a sound.”

Did Parker whack him over the head or something? Eliot can only stare at Britt, completely and utterly speechless at the implications he is making. Ghosts, spirits, communicate with them, em-pod?

“Excuse me?”

Britt nods enthusiastically, happily ignorant of Eliot’s confusion, and digs out his laptop from his bag next to him on the chair. “Yeah, that’s why we’re here. Nina. We think she is haunting this place and we are here to find her.”

As if that makes any more sense than his spiel about his toys. Eliot’s eyebrows have just about reached his hairline, and Eliot can feel the rest of his face being equally stumped. “Nina?” His brain isn’t really functioning in the face of this kind of illogical, insane rambling and his mouth is running without its permission.

“Yeah, she was a hooker, long time ago, and it is said she died in the elevator shaft out back. Apparently she made an enemy in one of the mobsters that lived around here and they pushed her down the empty shaft and killed her. Her name should be carved into the wall of the elevator shaft, if the lore is correct.”

Britt’s booted up his laptop and turns it towards Eliot to show him a very old picture of the brewery. Eliot supposes it’s his brewery at the time this Nina woman lived.

“Lore?” Eliot realizes he couldn’t sound more puzzled and disbelieving if he tried. Had he somehow stumbled into the Twilight Zone or something? Did Hardison poison him with a new brew and this was some sort of weird coma-dream?

Britt shrugs, blushes a little. “Well, not exactly lore, but the tour guide said it was based on a lot of witness stories and we figured we’d check it out. Maybe we could even use it for our show, get the whole team out here.”

That jolts something loose in Eliot’s brain and he holds up a hand again. “Wait, stop right there. Show? Whole team? What on earth is going on?”

KJ choses that moment to come back from the toilet and sit back down in his chair at the opposite side of the table from Britt. He glances at his coffee,a dn normally Eliot would feel bad for keeping his customers waiting, but give him a break, these guys are here because they think the brewery is freaking **haunted**. Hardison is going to have a field day with this.

Britt replies as if he doesn’t see Eliot’s exasperation. “Yeah, we’re from Ghost Hunters, the show on SyFy?”

When Eliot quirks one eyebrow, Britt blushes. “Right, no television. Anyway, we’re from TAPS,” he points at the letters on KJ’s shirt, ”the Trans Atlantic Paranormal Society. We hunt for ghosts in haunted places for a TV show.”

He looks at KJ expectantly and KJ grins back. “Got the carved name, EMF spikes, cold spots too.”

Britt actually fistpumps and that is **it** for Eliot. Something in his brain just snaps, safety off. “You’re kidding, right?” He looks around the brewery, “Where are the cameras? You’re joking. Please tell me you’re joking.”

Both Britt and KJ frown, as if **Eliot** is the one being weird, and Eliot throws his hands up in the air in defeat. “I give up.” He points a finger at Britt with a scowl. “You’re nuts.”

He stomps off, fishes his phone from his pocket as he makes his way to the kitchen. Cooking always calms him down and right now, he needs at least a good few hours behind the stove and oven to keep him from strangling the two men out front.

“Hardison? get your butt down here, **now**.”

“What? Why? I can’t, I’m with Parker.”Hardison sounds confused, but Eliot doesn’t care and he is all out of bullshit patience for today.

“There are a few cooks at the bar that want to hunt ghosts in our back room and I can’t deal with it. Get your ass here. Now.”

And of course, Hardison whoops and bonds with the geeks as soon as he gets to the bar. Great, now they’re never leaving. Eliot cooks.


End file.
